Welcome to Tips & Techniques! Here, you will find tips from your fellow artists on how they have solved certain challenges in their work. Once you have read them all, try to apply what you’ve learned to your own work.
Shadow & Light
by Peggy Williams
Peggy Williams is a master of light and shadow. Her strokes are almost imperceptible and give a sense of a form with just one swipe.
Light and shadow are tricky with watercolor painting because we always think of the objects like the sky, a tree, land, or a sunset in a flat one-dimensional way. Peggy Williams suggests breaking out of that she has learned that you can alter your strokes with a flat brush, for example, to visually create irregularities in tone that make it seem like an object is moving forward and back in space. Zigzagging sap green over cadmium yellow gives a sense of a tree’s leaves blocking out the sun.
What a Mess!
by Mary Buckmiller
Getting creative can be a little messy! Here’s a tip on how to contain the mess so you can enjoy the fun.
Have a gallon ice cream bucket at your painting station as a quick, convenient dump for dirty paint tools. Along with that, have a gallon milk jug filled with clean water to replace fresh water in your painting container. This saves you time while doing a painting.
Color Not Quite Right?
by Sheryl Baloun
Did you know that mixing primary and secondary colors can help you achieve the perfect color?
All nature has a little red in it. If your green looks fake, add red.
Click here to learn more about mixing colors to give them the tone you desire.
In Jennifer Stone's recent workshop, she offered a simple, yet valuable, tip: Always be organized with your painting table. Paint, brushes tools, water, sketch book, pencils and whatever you need should be in the same place each time you begin to paint.
In the latest Artists Magazine, Michelle Wooderson also stresses the importance of collecting and organizing your supplies. As well as making a detailed plan, setting short and long term goals, getting a notebook and taking copious notes, and to paint often and paint from life as you get to know your supplies. You will begin to develop that muscle memory that comes from repetition.
Light and shadow are tricky with watercolor painting because we always think of the objects like the sky, a tree, land, or a sunset in a flat one-dimensional way. Peggy Williams suggests breaking out of that she has learned that you can alter your strokes with a flat brush, for example, to visually create irregularities in tone that make it seem like an object is moving forward and back in space. Zigzagging sap green over cadmium yellow gives a sense of a tree’s leaves blocking out the sun.
Have a gallon ice cream bucket at your painting station as a quick, convenient dump for dirty paint tools. Along with that, have a gallon milk jug filled with clean water to replace fresh water in your painting container. This saves you time while doing a painting.
All nature has a little red in it. If your green looks fake, add red.
Click here to learn more about mixing colors to give them the tone you desire.
Paintbox Yogi with Deb Yoder
We all know how easy it is to get lost in our work! Bending over our paintings for hours at a time can create stiffness, tunnel vision, stress, frustration and poor performance. Learn from our very own Deb Yoder, Certified Yoga Instructor, how to take proper breaks in order to promote good health, positive energy and creativity.